The results are variable in their accuracy because for some applications it is easy to create a unique search e.g. MindManager, iMindMap, MindMeister, XMind, ConceptDraw or Mindomo but others produce results which are nothing to do with the software e.g. Freemind, Inspiration, MindMapper, Visio, or Curio. Another issue I frequently encounter is people referring to MindManager as MindMapper and I guess iMindMap has a few variations etc.

Do you think these results reflect your understanding of the market and the relative positions of the applications?

Unfortunately MindManager does not have a Wiki facility but you can answer the question “Please give examples of how you use it in your business?” by adding comments to this blog.

If you have Mindomo or MindMeister accounts you will be able to edit the maps below. I will be using the maps as examples of collaboration in my presentation on Thursday entitled “Using Mind Mapping Software to Organise your Business” at Wired Wessex in Winchester, UK.

A couple of evenings ago I attended a discussion about “Community is Essential to Building Brands”. As is my habit I inked the discussion on my Tablet PC using MindManager. Today I have processed it in to a web page which summarises the discussion, links to the web pages mentioned and “borrows” a few logos from their sites. The content is very interesting but here are some tips on how this map was created.

The central topic uses an image “shape” rather than the standard shapes on the ribbon. You will find these in the library under Shapes!

You can drag hyperlinks from links or the favicon in the address bar of your browser on to your topics. If the topic goes green, the link will be in the topic and if it goes red, it will be add as a subtopic with the title text from the web page.

Mostly the logos were grabbed, by right clicking on them, copying the image (not the link) and then pasting them in to a topic using Ctrl-Shift-Alt-V. This does not work with Google Chrome, it just adds the image link. So I reverted to Mozilla Firefox (Internet Explorer will work as well).

Occasionally you will get an image which has a black background. I then use the Windows Snipping Tool that comes by default with the Tablet PC. You can enable it on other PCs by turning on the Tablet PC tools in Control Panel > Programs and Features > Windows Features. Many image applications have screen capturing tools built in.

The web page is two exports combined:

Main Page: Is produced from one map. It is a customised combination of the clickable image and outline web export templates that I use for ConferenceREACTION and other reports. It’s nearly in a state that I could let others use it. Are you interested?

Social Networks Map: A clickable image export of the social networks map was pasted into the main web page. It’s easy to do: Copy the map image to the same folder as the main export. Copy the text from the mapname.html.txt file and paste this into an appropriate part of the main web page .html file. Change the default file name for one of the exports from index.html to something else e.g. map.html or you will be wondering why things don’t work.

I think those are the interesting bits of the export but if you have any questions please ask them below or contact me. To see the full maps please visit

Use the TweetJet experimental web / cloud application to capture the tweets, save to a xmmap file and process with MindManager. This process can work upto a point for non-MindManager users. Anyone can access the experiment.

I used the latter to map the conversation with Mattias and others. There were 45 tweets related to the question, mainly exchanges between Mattias and myself.

You can see the scale and complexity of the conversation in the thumbnail view opposite.

Here is how I mapped the Twitter conversation and note you do not need MindManager to create a map.

Mindjet the developers of MindManager have created a free (under-development) online cloud tool which imports Twitter information to a map. It can be saved or printed but the map you create only exists whilst the page is open (vapourware!). Read the Mindjet blog summarising the Twitter Tool. Or jump straight to the simplest version of the Twitter Mapping tool, (it takes some time to load on first use), connect it to your Twitter account, ignore all the instructions and click on My Profile. Now you can click on any of the normal Twitter groupings such as Sent, Direct, Favorities etc and the map will be populated with your tweets or ones to you. Go back and read the instructions if this grabs your attention!

I used the Search Twitter topic to assemble the Tweets I needed for the conversation map. Click that, enter a search term and you get a set of Tweets. You can repeat for different search terms. Using this I gathered together the Tweets in the extended conversation with Mattias and others.

The only editing (apart from adding more sub-topics / Tweets) you can do on this map is deletion. So prior to saving or printing you may wish to delete the instructions, feedback and other unused topics. Printing the resulting map is also possible.

The map can also be saved in .xmmap format to your computer. This file format can be opened by at least the following applications: MindManager from version X5 onwards (PC and MAC), MindManager for iPhone, iThoughts HD (iPad), ThinkingSpace (Android). I saved the map, edited it and then exported it with MindManager to produce the Big Clickable Picture, an Outline and a Flash viewer. You can also save the file, change the file type to .xml and open it an XML viewer or editor.

I am experimenting at the moment with the Thinking Space app for the Android Smartphones. An HTC Wildfire in my case. It allows you make maps and save them in MindManager xmmap file format. It will also import xmmap (it’s one of the MindManager save options) within reason.

This evening I went to a presentation in a very pleasent new hall in the Hampshire County Council offices in Winchester organised by Wired Wessex. I decided to leave my Tablet PC behind and map the event on my phone. Not an easy thing for me to do. 🙂

The presentation was given by Stephen Dann a veteran of LinkedIn and a very professional user of the platform. Using Thinking Space presented two problems for me: 1. I am still learning the UI. 2. You have to be concise. You can’t type in a phrase quickly enough. Here is the result which you can make appear by magic in the My Pictures folder of my Tablet PC.

Then I opened the Thinking Space file from the folder in my smartphone via Bluetooth and edited it in MindManager. The unusual thing about Stephen’s presentation was that he used presentation mode with MindManager 7. There was a lot of talk about groups but Stephen is not a member of those groups. So I have added links to them to this map and some expansion on the topics in the original. You would be very welcome Stephen.

Is the phone and Thinking Space better than pen and paper? Yes if you want to publish to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, WordPress quickly or export to MindManager. No it is not as fluid.

Is the phone and Thinking Space better than MindManager in Ink mode on the Tablet PC. No but it does weigh a lot less and I cycled the 8 miles to Winchester.

Here is Stephen’s PowerPoint version of the presentation as 10 second per slide silent video. Change to 720p resolution and full screen for clearer slides.

For several years I have been coaching people on-line to use MindManager more effectively. Some clients have been within 30 miles of Alresford, nr Winchester, Hampshire, England where I am based. Others have been in San Francisco and Sydney! They all benefit from having a session which is specific to them, takes place at a time to suit them (and me. I have not had a session between midnight and 6am yet!) and, involves no lost time and cost travelling to a training venue. I recommend a 45 minute session. This is long enough for you to pick up several tasks, some of which may take you a few days to complete or practice.

“This is a really cost-effective, energy efficient and time-saving way to meet and share material, and I can’t recommend the approach highly enough”

The normal process is to book a free fifteen minute technology testing and briefing session. We could be using phone, Skype, RealVNC, Live Meeting, Team Viewer, NetMeeting depending on the requirements of the session. The briefing is to find out what you want to do in your session or series of sessions. This is so I can be prepared with examples including the ones you send me and think about the structure for your particular requirement.

“It was only today when I had to get a project completed quickly, a project I had no idea how to tackle or even what to do – that I realised the full value of the training.”

During the session I will share my desktop with you and you may be showing me your issues from yours. When the session completes I will provide a map with a summary of the session, links to relevant follow up material and some homework. Hopefully you will come back for further session suitably spaced so we can review progress and I can suggest next steps.

“Sessions are always on time and very concentrated. Andrew has solved most of the problems my work has presented us with, and left me copious notes (in map form) for me to study afterwards.”

Normally I charge £87 plus VAT per 45 minutes including preparation and post session activities. Until the 31st October I will be charging £67 plus VAT.

You can contact me on 44 1962 73534 or 44 7813 211451 or Skype ajwilcox or Twitter ajwilcox.

If you want to suggest some dates and times, send me 3 proposals including the 15 minute briefing via Meeting Wizard to email andrew@cabre.co.uk. If I can accept one of your proposed session times I will send an invoice which you can be settled by credit card or electronic bank transfer. Payment has to cleared before the session.

As a trial until 31st October 2010 I will also offer the option of booking a 30 minute unprepared session for £37 plus VAT. I will not do any post session work unless we agree terms for this. Use Meeting Wizard to propose some times.

Notes on VAT: In the UK its 17.5%. If you are resident in the EU and you give me your VAT number I can supply without VAT otherwise its 17.5%. If you are in the Rest of the World the charge is VAT free.

Last night I met with an ex Unilever colleague in Gulidford who had recently returned from 20ish years working in Europe for various companies in Operations and Supply Chain. We had not been face to face for twenty years. It was a very comfortable discussion over a pint of beer. During the evening I mentioned several groups and people he could contact.

He will be getting a map like this very shortly with slightly more info than you can see as a clickable web page. It was very quick to construct with MindManager just dragging and dropping links from various web pages and using the Outlook MindManager contact buttons. In my friends version the Outlook panels are open and he will get an outline version as well, so he can copy and paste information to his “database”.

MindManager is brilliant at doing this. I will also supply him with a link to the MindManager 8 Mac and the orginal map.

This afternoon I was one of the Mindjet Partners listening to Michael Deutch give his briefing on the forthcoming release of MindManager 9 via a webinar. As is my habit I mapped it in MindManager as he gave it. Some of the detail is missing but the support material from Mindjet will cover that. Links at the bottom of the page.

My experience with the beta has been good. I like the new ribbon, the reduced CPU time consumed, the SharePoint addin and I have just found those new images! I still have many other improvements to give a real workout to: slide mode, Gantt chart pane and planning the day in tasks with durations in minutes 🙂 .

It’s a great product which I hope will bring many new users on board and provide that extra oomph to the users of earlier versions. As someone who has used MindManager almost daily since 1996 I am looking forward to getting the release version, personalising it for my applications, listening and contributing to the MindManager community, and (fingers crossed) assisting my existing and future clients to exploit MindManager.

How did I do it? Firstly the original web site “Programme for Government” appeared for a while and then dissappeared. I planned to link to each section to a MindManager map and analyse it. It may be back by now.

The alternative route was to download the PDF version, paste the content in to Word, delete the index and create a document which could be analysed by Context Organiser. I linked my Word version to the map and ran Context Organiser. It is an easy process and produced the map you see a clip of to the right. The options are available in a right click drop down menu on a linked topic after installing Context Organiser for Mindjet MindManager.